


Ueda-sama wa Kamisama

by myxstorie



Category: Johnny's Entertainment, KAT-TUN (Band), NewS (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-13
Updated: 2009-10-13
Packaged: 2018-02-10 02:57:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2008344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myxstorie/pseuds/myxstorie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>NEWS/KAT-TUN genfic for <span class="ljuser i-ljuser i-ljuser-type-P"><a class="i-ljuser-profile" href="http://sashjun.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://sashjun.livejournal.com/"><b>sashjun</b></a></span> for <span class="ljuser i-ljuser i-ljuser-type-C"></span><a class="i-ljuser-profile" href="http://jerainbowbridge.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://jerainbowbridge.livejournal.com/"><b>jerainbowbridge</b></a>, originally posted <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/jerainbowbridge/7916.html">here</a>. Comes with a ridiculous amount of help from Jinface XD</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ueda-sama wa Kamisama

“Did you know,” Nakamaru says one day as KAT-TUN lounge about in their dressing room between rehearsal sessions, “In some school in China, they decided to help the students release their inner aggression and stress by providing punch bags with the teachers’ faces on. They encouraged the students to take their anger out on the punch bags instead of venting their emotions in needless and destructive manners.”

“That’s a pretty good idea,” Koki says, looking up from his cell phone. “Although I might get Johnny-san confused with his punch bag and hit him, instead.”

“I think we should have them here, too,” Jin adds, startling everybody - they'd all been sure he was asleep. “I’d beat up Maru's the most, I think.”

“Not Taguchi’s?” Ueda asks, and Jin looks thoughtful for a long moment, as if the decision takes too much brain power. The rest of them hope he doesn't overheat with the effort. Thankfully, he responds before his hair starts smoking, so they can all breathe a sigh of relief.

"Can I stick both pictures on the same one?”

Everyone ignores him.

“I don’t want anybody hitting my face,” Kame mutters, looking slightly wounded at the thought, and Jin smirks.

“Yeah, you already look like you’ve had your nose broken.”

“Hey,” T-TUN protest in unison. It's quite possibly the most co-ordinated they've been all day.

“Says you, who’s had black eyes for the last three years.” So many years together have left Kame unfazed by Jin’s cattiness; it's how they show their affection, really.

“For fuck’s sake, not another KAT-TUN domestic.” Six heads swivel around, to find Ryo leaning against the door frame and rolling his eyes as he looks into their dressing room. “I don’t want to have to summon the fire department to break Akanishi out of the cleaning cupboard again.”

“It’s not our fault he shut himself behind a door that didn’t open from the inside,” Kame says sullenly.

“Pi!” Jin exclaims, clearly oblivious to everything else around him as his face lights up, spotting his best friend loitering behind Ryo in the doorway. He leaps up, scattering lyrics sheets and sending skincare products flying in his bid to scramble across the room. “Are we ready to get started, then?”

“Excuse me,” Kame sniffs. “Have we finished rehearsing for the day, then?”

Ryo eyes Kame, then rest of KAT-TUN. “What? Didn’t Mary tell you?”

“Ehh?” Koki vocalises their confusion, because no, Mary didn't tell them.

“Oh,” Jin says, looking sheepish, “I guess she wanted me to tell you guys, too. I thought...”

The other seven people all turn to look at him dispassionately, and Jin stops speaking, mouth opening and closing for a moment reminiscent of a goldfish.

"You don't have to come," Ryo grins, "So long as you're happy with Akanishi being your allocated spokesperson."

Suddenly, the other five look much more interested. Jin just shrugs and grins, wrapping his fingers around his cellphone and holding it to his mouth like a microphone.

“Ladies!” he announces, stepping forward and projecting his voice as though he’s doing live MC. Koki clears his throat warningly, but Jin battles on, regardless. “Akanishi's Army-“ he flips a finger up over his shoulder as Ryo and Yamapi make disapproving noises, “-are proud to announce that this afternoon, the two groups known as ‘NEWS’ and ‘KAT-TUN’ are to be the forerunners of an experiment currently known under the working title of ‘Intergroup Unity’.” He pauses to catch his breath, and Ueda speaks up.

"We’re not being split into sub-units, are we?” He glances nervously at Kame, and their eyes meet over the hairspray.

“Did you have to learn that speech by heart, Akanishi?” Ryo comments from behind him. Jin turns and sticks his tongue out before turning back and opening his mouth to continue.

The silence stretches on for a few moments before Junno giggles awkwardly, and Ueda grows bored and turns back to reading his magazine.

“Have you forgotten the bit that comes next?” Ryo asks, and Jin’s shoulders slump, defeated.

“I was doing okay until they interrupted!” He complains with a pout, and Yamapi takes pity on him, however amusing it is to watch him struggle.

“It’s for cartoon KAT-TUN,” he explains, “Though I don't know why they got this idiot to be the messenger.”

“This is the messenger..” Jin sings softly, Yamapi's comment going over his head completely, and Ueda throws a shoe at him. Jin dodges; conversation resumes.

“Oh,” Maru looks up, and the penny dropping is almost audible, “I think I heard something about this the other week... Weren’t the crew saying that we’d be doing another special sometime soon? And we’d be split up into three groups again...?”

Jin-less KAT-TUN fix Maru with a cold stare.

“You mean you knew about this 'the other week’ and didn’t say anything?” Kame’s expression is incredulous to say the least.

“Um.” Maru looks at Koki for assistance. Jin just laughs quietly because it’s funny when everybody picks on Nakamaru.

“Anyway,” Yamapi says pointedly, trying to drag the topic back on-track, and really, it was no wonder Ueda had stepped down from being KAT-TUN’s official leader; they're impossible to lead, “We need to decide how we’re going to pair up; two of yours with two of ours, over three episodes.”

“How is this related to ‘Intergroup Unity’?” Ueda asks with a frown, “It’s just NEWS and KAT-TUN.”

“We’re going on Vs. Arashi next month,” Ryo informs them, and KAT-TUN look as though they almost feel sorry for him until Ryo grins a wide, shark-like smile and says, “And you’re guesting the week after.”

“Shotgun Pi!” Jin yells, arm shooting up into the air and waggling around like an excited child. “I don’t care who goes with me as long as I get to be with Pi!”

“I want to go with the princess,” Ryo drawls, and there is silence as everybody turns to look at Ueda, who looks between them all with raised eyebrows before turning back to Ryo.

“You want to go with Kame?” he queries, eyes sparkling a little. Kame looks as though he he feels he should be offended by this but really, he isn’t at all.

“Ryo-chan and Tat-chan! Definitely,” Jin grins and nods. “Ryoda and Pin in the first episode!”

Ryo frowns, looking puzzled, “What’s your dog got to do with anything?”

“What’s ‘ryoda’?” Ueda asks.

“Ugh.” Jin exhales heavily, energy levels suddenly depleted. He flops down onto the couch again, “You guys are so clueless sometimes.”

Eventually, after two fights, one spilled bottle of nail polish remover and two occasions in which Kame throws his arms up, huffs and says, “Really, I don’t care!” they finally decide who’s going with whom and in what order.

“Won’t the other members of NEWS want to have a say in who's in which episode with us?” Nakamaru asks, and the other members all pause; nobody has raised that as an issue during the entire hour in which they have been discussing this - the concept simply hadn't ever occurred to them.

Yamapi just grins. “It’s okay,” he says easily, “NEWS all like each other.”

“Are you saying we don’t?”

The atmosphere turns frosty for a minute as Koki and Yamapi stare at each other, but then Junno’s phone rings and the tension breaks as five people simultaneously throw things at him.

-

As part of their Intergroup Unity assignment, Ryo is given a hand-held camcorder and told to film them all deciding what to do for their section of the episode, with the explicit command that there is to be no footage of anything unprofessional.

“Why does he get the camera and not one of us?” Jin asks.

Ueda fixes Jin with a sceptical look. “We both know how successful I am at keeping technology in working, unbroken order,” he points out, “And I wouldn’t trust you with an ice cream, much less a camcorder.”

“I would be much better with a camcorder,” Jin says, sounding particularly sure of himself, “They don’t taste as good.”

“Ooh, can we go for ice cream?” asks Yamapi, “I know a really great parlour in Roppongi.”

“Yay, Roppongi!” Ueda and Jin shout, punching the air, and then laugh. Yamapi looks puzzled. Ryo keeps the camcorder trained on them.

“We like Roppongi,” Ueda explains with a nod.

“Roppongi it is, then,” Ryo says, and it's decided.

They have to turn the camera off as they leave the building to make sure they don’t accidentally catch footage of unsuspecting idols having bad hair days, but they turn it on again once they're inside the chauffer-driven car that takes them to the ice cream parlour. Jin calls shotgun for the passenger seat so that he can control the music, but since Ryo is in charge of the camera he ends up in the front seat anyway, instead passing the cable back to Jin so that he can connect his iPod to the car’s speaker system.

“Should we really be playing unlicensed music during footage for your variety show?” Yamapi asks, but Jin shrugs and starts playing Lady Gaga anyway.

“They’ll probably cut it,” Ueda points out. "The show's only half an hour.”

“Oi, Ryo-chan, don’t film me too much today,” Jin says, clearly still ignoring everything around him as he squints at his reflection in the rear-view mirror over the driver’s head, “My face is all puffy.”

“That’s because you’re fat,” Ryo comments offhandedly, and grins as he sees the driver’s lips quirk with amusement.

“Do you see this, viewers?” Jin exclaims to the camera, feigning hurt, “Such abuse! Doesn't it make you wonder how I stay so cheerful all the time?"

Ueda just snorts in disbelief. The camera zooms in on his face, looking out of the car window, the shadows from the buildings and trees flickering across his skin as they drive by.

“So, Yamapi, tell us about this ice cream parlour we’re going to,” Jin says, and the camera swings back to Yamapi's face - except that it’s zoomed in too much and Ryo has to hastily zoom out again otherwise all the viewers will see is Yamapi’s eyes in high definition.

“It sells really good Italian ice cream,” Yamapi says. “Italian ice cream is some of the best in the world. I know KAT-TUN’s Nakamaru-kun and NEWS’s Masuda sometimes visit this place as well.”

“I’m part Italian, did you know that?” Jin says, and Yamapi pretends to be surprised despite the fact that he already knows.

“No, really? Can you speak some Italian to us, Akanishi-kun?”

Jin wets his lips with his tongue. “Sí,” he hazards. “Buenos días, Señor Yamashita.”

“... Isn't that Spanish, Jin?” Yamapi asks kindly.

“Stop trying to lie to the viewers,” Ryo says from the front seat, and Ueda hits Jin on the head hard enough for him to yelp - but not hard enough for it to actually hurt.

“We’re here!” Yamapi says with a grin, and Ryo turns the camera around to himself, flashing a peace sign before shutting it off.

-

They order several different types of ice cream, since it’s on the show's budget and not their own - all in the name of market research, of course. That’s Jin’s logic, anyway, and nobody in their right mind would turn down free ice cream.

“Ueda-kun, why are you eating the wafer biscuits and not any of the ice cream?” Yamapi asks, when they are seated at a table in the corner of the shop. Jin helps himself to a spoonful of Ueda’s ice cream, really only to see what will happen. When the answer is 'nothing', he takes another spoonful, because whether he eats it or not, Ueda has good taste in dessert.

“I don’t really eat ice cream,” Ueda says. “I like sweet things, but I can't eat them that much. I love dry food, though, crackers and bread are my favourite.” He flashes a grin and takes another bite of wafer.

Ryo looks stunned, and shares a glance with Yamapi, “You like dry food more than ice cream? I always knew you were the weird one."

"He could kick your ass,” Jin points out, before stealing some ice cream from Yamapi’s bowl, this time. “Not Pi’s, though. Besides, nobody gets to kick Pi’s ass except me.” Yamapi coughs around his spoon, but no-one's listening.

“Really?” Ueda says, carefully tucking his wafer under his bowl, "I think we should test this."

“You mean... A fight?” Jin’s eyes turn wide.  
2  
“More like a test of strength," Ueda grins, cheerful if not for the glint in his eye, "We can arm wrestle in here, right?”

“Yamashita! Will you accept Ueda-kun’s challenge?” Ryo asks, putting on a deep, gameshow host's voice and pointing the camcorder at Yamapi. The other man smiles, eyes crinkling, and nods. The ice cream bowls are soon pushed to the side, and Ueda flexes his hand whilst Yamapi shrugs his jacket off.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Jin announces to the camera, holding an invisible microphone up to his face and flinging his other arm wide, “You are about to witness for the very first time a spontaneous battle of strength between the two strongest members of YOU&J-”

“I don’t know,” Yamapi interrupts thoughtfully, “Masuda-kun is pretty strong too, ne... ”

“Be quiet,” Jin commands, not breaking stride. “Who will win? Who will reign triumphant? In a battle of the survival of the fittest, only the strongest prevail!”

"Do you even know what all of those words mean?” Ueda places his elbow on the table and holds his hand out to Yamapi, not even bothering to look at Jin when he insults him, “Let’s just go, okay.”

“Give it your best shot,” Yamapi says, taking Ueda’s hand and gripping it firmly.

“On my word,” Jin says, positioning himself opposite Ryo and between their joined hands, still holding his fist up in front of his mouth, “Ready... Steady... Go!”

Almost immediately, the two competing idols throw their weight into trying to force the other man’s arm down onto the tabletop. They are almost perfectly matched for strength, neither giving way for long moments, staring at each other in a fight for mental as well as physical dominance.

“You’re supposed to let Pi win,” Jin grumbles, and Ueda narrows his eyes.

“I’m not losing to him,” he promises, and the muscles in his arm twitch with the exertion.

“Come on, Pi!” Jin cheers. “You can do it!”

“What happened to group loyalty,” Ueda growls through gritted teeth.

"Intergroup Unity,” Jin says firmly, grabbing Yamapi’s hand and adding his strength to the fight.

“That’s called cheating, Akanishi!” Ryo sets the camera down on the table top and adds his contribution to Ueda’s side.

“So much for friendship,” Jin mutters, while Ueda almost gives in from surprise.

“Why are you helping me?” he asks, risking a glance at Ryo.

“Don’t read anything into it, Princess,” Ryo says, face screwed up in concentration.

It is at this exact moment that Jin’s phone rings, the loud, shrill ringtone breaking everyone's concentration. As he automatically lets go to switch it off, Yamapi yelps, and the back of his hand hits the table with force.

“Jin!” Yamapi protests, massaging his hand as Ryo grabs Ueda’s wrist and together they punch the air in front of the camera. “What happened to you helping me?!”

“I forgot to turn my phone off,” Jin says with apologetic eyes, holding it out to demonstrate.

“Since you lost,” Ryo says, picking up the camcorder again and zooming in on Yamapi’s face, “Ueda Tatsuya is now crowned the Iron Man of Johnny’s, and you have to complete a penalty task.”

“That’s hardly fair,” Jin points out. “He lost against both of you. When it was just the two of them, they were evenly matched.”

Ryo shrugs, "Then you can do it with him. As the reigning champion, Ueda-kun, what will you instruct the losers to do?”

Ueda eyes Ryo warily, then grins as an idea comes to him. “Uh. They have to go to Himuro Mansion, you know, the one they used for inspiration for the Fatal Frame games, and take photographs. See if that picture of the girl comes out when they’re developed.”

The other three idols pale. “That place is really, really scary,” Yamapi says. Jin clutches the edge of the table and sits down. “And Jin gets really frightened of haunted places when they’re not even haunted.”

"I didn't think it was even real," Ryo adds, and Ueda's grin turns wolfish.

“Oh, it's real alright. Take the camcorder, too,” he nods at the still-filming device. “So that everybody knows that you actually went.”

“Can’t you come with us?” Jin asks quietly.

Ryo speaks up, “No, definitely not. You lost, it’s your task."

"Just don’t go inside,” Ueda warns them, scribbling the directions for their driver down on the back of a napkin, “Or into any of the surrounding buildings. We’ll leave our cellphones on in case you need to get in touch.” Then he grins widely as Ryo hands Yamapi the camcorder, “Good luck!”

As the two leave to face their doom, he hears Yamapi say;

“Ueda-kun really has a super-S side, ne...”

In the time it’s taken for them to have their arm-wrestling match and to send Yamapi and Jin off to practice screaming at old houses, the rest of the ice cream has melted and Ueda’s wafer biscuits have gone soggy.

“Since they have the camera, I guess we don’t have to be ‘idols’ right now,” Ryo says as he puts the bill on the Jimusho’s account. “Did you want to go to the gym after all?”

Ueda finishes sending an email from his phone before wrapping his scarf around his neck and slipping his sunglasses on. “What’s with you being so nice off-camera?” he asks, low enough not to be heard by the ice cream parlour staff but loud enough for Ryo to hear, “We don’t spend any time together, normally.”

They've left the shop and are walking down the street before Ryo manages to word his response correctly. “I’m not being ‘nice’,” he says, “I’m just being ‘me’.”

“You know what I mean,” Ueda shrugs.

“It is my role in life,” Ryo says, like he's explaining the meaning of life, “To be astonishingly good-looking, talented and charismatic,” – he glares as Ueda snorts – “And also to encourage others to work hard to improve themselves.”

"By using verbal abuse?” Ueda asks, and Ryo nods.

“Exactly.”

“So... You insulted me on live television, when I was young and impressionable, just because you wanted me to improve myself?”

“That’s about right.”

“You’re an asshole,” Ueda states as they stand at a pedestrian crossing.

“An asshole with a heart, maybe.”

“I don’t know what the fangirls see in you.”

“You don’t?” Ryo sounds genuine just then, and Ueda turns to look at him to find Ryo looking back. The lights change, but Ueda's too busy frowning at the look on Ryo’s face to notice that everybody has stepped out onto the road.

“What?” Ryo sounds defensive and reproachful all at once. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Nothing,” Ueda says, snapping out of his reverie in time to grab Ryo’s wrist and run across the road before the waiting cars start to move again.

They don’t stop running once they hit the pavement on the other side of the road, feet pounding as they race through the crowds of people. At some point, Ueda releases his grip on Ryo’s wrist and pulls ahead a little, and it’s only when they veer off into a park and slow down that Ryo manages to catch up.

“You freak,” he pants, flopping onto the grass and lying on his back as he tries to catch his breath, “What the hell did you do that for?”

“Don’t you ever get moments,” Ueda asks, leaning against a tree, not short of breath at all. “When you’re just bursting with this urge to move, and unless you do something about it, it’s like you’re going to explode or something?”

“No,” Ryo replies breathlessly, “I don’t. I’m usually too tired for that kind of thing.”

“Oh.” Ueda looks disappointed for a moment, and Ryo almost feels bad.

Almost.

“It was fun, though,” he adds, “I haven’t spontaneously started running in a while.”

“The more you run, the more energy you get,” Ueda sits down on the grass next to his collapsed companion, appeased for now, “You should try jogging in the mornings.”

“Jogging to and from Osaka?” Ryo raises an eyebrow, “Yes, because I really have time to fit running in to my schedule.”

Ueda shrugs, his expression closing off, and Ryo grimaces; they were very nearly getting on, and he just had to go and be acerbic, in typical Nishikido fashion.

“I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad if I had someone to go running with,” he concedes, and sees Ueda’s head turn ever so slightly back towards him. “Like, a jogging partner, or something. It’d be annoying if I had to go running on my own. Boring.”

Ueda’s lips quirk and he ducks his head to hide a small grin, “You mean you’re not brave enough to run on your own? I never thought of the great Nishikido Ryo as being somebody who needed his hand holding like that.”

“Since you seemed to like holding my hand just now, I think you should just accept your new job and stop complaining,” Ryo says, sitting up and stretching his arms out in front of him. A strong hand on his back makes him jump, and he looks over his shoulder with a puzzled expression.

“You have grass on your back,” Ueda explains as he brushes the stalks from Ryo’s shirt, and Ryo faces forwards again, pointedly ignoring the way he sort of misses the touch when it's gone.

Just as the atmosphere between them begins to relax and conversation starts flowing more easily again, Ueda frowns and he gets to his feet.

“What's up?” Ryo asks as Ueda shoves his hand into his pocket and pulls out his vibrating cell phone.

“Call,” he says, looking down at the display, “... It’s from an unknown number.” He chews his lip for a moment, debating whether or not to risk answering, then perches his sunglasses on top of his head, pushing his hair back from his face as he accepts the call.

“Hello?”

“Tat-chan! Thank god you answered! Ryo-chan’s phone, I dunno, we couldn’t get through and Pi’s phone’s broken and there’s no signal on mine and I couldn’t find enough change to use this phone box but it’s working without any money in it, and-”

“Jin, what is it? You’re talking too fast. Slow down. And keep breathing.”

“You make it sound like he’s about to give birth,” Ryo comments, and Ueda smirks.

“We tried to take a photo with Pi’s phone but the camera broke and I swear something moved inside the mansion and I don’t know where the chauffer’s gone, maybe he’s dead...”

“Are you still filming?”

"What? Um, I... yes? I think so? Are we still filming, Pi? Oh, yeah, look, the red light’s still on.”

“Brilliant. Fine, we’ll be there in an hour.”

“An hou- it doesn’t take that long to get here!”

“See ya,” Ueda says cheerfully, and hangs up.

Despite how frightened they know Jin must be, they don’t particularly hurry to leave Roppongi or, indeed, to get outside Tokyo.

“How do you even know where the mansion is?” Ryo asks once they've made it back to the Jimusho and are in Ueda's car, turning out of the parking lot. He looks suspicious. “I thought they just made up the location for the game.”

Ueda looks slightly sly, and doesn’t answer directly. Instead, he puts his cellphone on loudspeaker and calls one of his contacts.

“Good afternoon, Ueda-sama,” an elderly male voice says on the other end of the line, “How may I help you?”

“Please contact Aki and tell him that he can leave now,” Ueda says brusquely, “My colleague and I are on our way to collect our friends.”

“Very good, Ueda-sama,” The old man replies, and Ueda thanks him before ending the call.

“That,” he says as he pulls onto one of the main roads leading out of Tokyo, “is the reason I know where the mansion is, and how I know they're both perfectly safe, if slightly stupid."

“Oh?” Ryo looks intrigued, not even trying to defend his friends' combined brainpower, and Ueda explains that the 'mansion' is in fact located on grounds owned by his family, and is most certainly not haunted.

Ryo looks stunned. “But. You. How?”

Ueda just grins brightly and shrugs, and Ryo suddenly feels very glad that, for now, Ueda is on his side.

-

Even though they end up scrapping most of the footage from the pre-show filming, from the ratings they receive when that episode airs, it is the general consensus that the ‘Intergroup Unity’ project is a resounding success.

And if Ryo now calls Ueda ‘-sama’, really, who is going to dare to question it?


End file.
